My new book Fresh Music is now available. Fresh Music has really nice reviews already! The book chronicles the many years, since the 1970’s, of the Creative Workshop Ensemble(CreW) at Berklee College of music and internationally. Bill F [ ... ]

Rob - Of course you live and breathe music. But what do you think you would do if you werent a musician? What is Jon Damian from the parallel universe doing for a living? Was there a point in your life when you wanted to do something else?
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Archive for the ‘
Jon’s Articles ’ Category

“Jon what are you doing with that poor Rubbertellie!!” Visitors to my website have been curious about the opening photo of myself with the Rubbertellie. This was taken during a performance of Rubbertellie Murals at Gallery 119. In this piece I perform a musical piece as well as produce a painting, in this case a 20 foot-long mural. Technicians feed the blank “canvas” between the strings and fingerboard of the Rubbertellie moving it along as I literally grab globs of acrylic paint as I play the instrument. The sounds produced by the strings, and paper, are really fun to work with. There is some footage of Rubbertellie Murals on the documentary film Heavy Rubber: 30 Years in the Life of an Instrument: the Rubbertellie.

Having heard Jon’s Rubbertellie on Dedications: Faces and Places, his CD with Bill Frisell, folks are always curious about what the Rubbertellie actually is! What does it look like? Well there is a YouTube link that shows Rubbetellie in action with Jon playing Brother Sharpe, a cut from the Dedications CD. The concert performance was at Bishop’s University in Quebec, Canada.

Some of my fun experiences during the Umbrian Jazz Festival can be found in an article I recently wrote for BT, an alumni magazine published by Berklee College of Music.

“A Perugian Recipe” takes a look at the people, the food and the landscape of Italy and how these elements inspired the Creative Workshop Ensembles and Master Classes I conducted as part of Berklee’s Umbria Jazz clinics.

If you are not able to get a hard copy of the magazine, here is the link for the article. Check out the pasta in the graphic!